Nintendo Switch – Initial Review

The Nintendo Switch has been out for three weeks now, given me enough time to truly absorb my thoughts, and my initial view of Nintendo’s latest system. So what is my impression exactly? How has Nintendo’s “savior” been faring at the start of it’s life so far?

The Nintendo Switch in practice, is what I have always wanted from Nintendo. Ever since they had the Gameboy Advance ad on for the Gamecube I had imagined them merging the platforms together. The Wii U somewhat “tried” to do something similar with the gamepad, but it ended up getting in the way of game development, and as a expensive unused aspect of the console. The Switch off the bat seems to be what the Wii U should have been in the first place. Now that is just some of opinion and previous look at Nintendo, now what do I actually think about the Switch?

The premise of Nintendo’s new device is being able to “Switch” between this home console, and handheld/tablet aspect. Taking the system with you to school, work, the store, lunch, a friends place, wherever. This is not what I’d call a truly new idea, but Nintendo knows how to make good handhelds as proven since the Gameboy. Being able to take it anywhere with me, seeing as if I am not home a decent amount of the time, it makes playing games much easier, I likely wouldn’t be as far as I am in Zelda if not for the handheld aspect. It feels nice to hold my hands wherever I was with it. The store, my office, in class, the restaurant, just everywhere. Of course tabletop mode works great as well, in someones home or out and about and such. I took my switch out to dinner with my friend and to a party to play some fun games, turning the two joycons on their sides to play some Fast RMX or 12 Switch, and some people of course wanted to see Zelda. It just works easily, and playing with the two joycons in hand is quite comfortable. You can lay back on your couch with them, easily in hand, of course they give you a grip to place them into, it plays more like a regular controller in that form, despite having smaller buttons and being vertical, but personally I think it feels fine. Of course as an accessory their is a $70 Pro controller you can purchase, it feels great but I don’t think it’ll be necessary for everyone.

The systems OS is very simple a bar-bones but it works. The games are in face similar to how the PS4 is set up. You have your basic settings, you can change your theme from eye piercing white, to the black theme that everyone should use. You can as many WiFi signals as you want hooked up to it, which is a big step up compared to the Wii U and 3ds being limited on the matter. The Switch has eShop, which at the moment is very simple and clean but will need to become more organized in the future, as more and more games are released. It also has dedicated news app, for trailers, new game releases, etc. I do like this feature a lot as you can find all your Switch news in one place. Outside of that, it is very limited to what you can do. Of course you can have an account that at the moment lets you have a friends list, buy games, and that’s about it. The key feature here is of course, playing games at home and on the go, and it does the main selling point very well, although the dock they give you, feels very cheap but with the screen protector I bought for my Switch it sits in there nice and tightly.

Some accessories you should buy are of course a screen protector. I bought a Glass 2-Pack tempered glass screen protector, you can buy this on Amazon for a about $8, and I use their products on my Switch, iPhone, and my iPad. I also bought a HORI game card case for $10 and it holds 24 game cards, so this will come in handy for years to come. Of course I bought the Pro controller as stated earlier and it normally sells for $70 and it’s worth it for some, maybe not for others. Then I bought the Nintendo Switch Elite Player Backpack, which allows you to take everything with you easily and handily, I do plan on buying a smaller carrying case in the future, but this bag is high quality and if you plan on dragging your Switch around a lot buy this, it goes for about $50 normally. Of course you should also buy at least The Legend of Zelda, my review on that should be coming very soon.

Now I have to be honest I think you should wait till either this summer or this holiday to get this. Unless you are a big Zelda fan, or just a hardcore gamer. I personally think it’s worth it to me since I leave the house a lot, but to the average consumer, I’d wait till games like Mario Kart 8, Splatoon 2, and Super Mario Odyssey releases. Stay tuned for all upcoming Switch reviews here at RGN, and at the end of the year we will come back and look at what the Switch has become by then.

Editor’s Note: RealGamerNewZ has moved web servers, some older posts can no longer be commented on and have been preserved without their images. Thank you for your understanding in this matter. This article was written by Tristan Werbe on 20170323 and was last modified on 20170323 .